Ten days before Hamas militants crossed the border into southern Israel, the president of the United Arab Emirates got the Israeli Prime Minister on the phone. Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed warned Netanyahu about what was coming.
That is the central claim of an investigation published Tuesday by Haaretz (Israeli news), drawn from a forthcoming book by journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval called Hostages: 843 Days of Abandonment.
According to the reporting, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed spent 45 minutes on a secure line in late September 2023 telling the Israeli prime minister that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was preparing something big, and that Israel needed to get ready.
Netanyahu, the book says, thanked him, reassured him, and then never told his own defense minister, his army chief, his Shin Bet director, or his Mossad chief that the call had happened.
His office calls the whole thing a fabrication. “An absolute lie!” the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu did not speak with the president of the United Arab Emirates during the period in question and did not receive any warning from him.”
Spokesman Topaz Luk told Israel Radio it was another attempt to twist the record before an election.
We recently reported on “red flags” IDF soldiers and analysts noticed about the morning of October 7, 2023 and how Netanyahu ignored warnings from IDF soldiers and intelligence that Hamas was planning something big.
The fact that Mohammed bin Zayed warned Netanyahu about what was coming bolsters the argument that some people are making about why Netanyahu failed to do anything to protect the Israeli people — even after he received multiple warnings about what Hamas had planned.
The Prime Minister also knew that Hamas was receiving Qatari funding. The reason behind Qatar's decision to transfer money into Gaza was attributed to a desire to preserve an appearance of peaceful ties with Israel.
This was done with Israel's knowledge, and even encouragement at times, the report said. Another piece of the story of what Netanyahu knew before the October 7 attack.
“I Am Preparing a Zilal…” —Sinwar
The story starts with a negotiation that fell apart.
Through most of 2023, Israel and Hamas were negotiating indirectly about easing the Gaza blockade and swapping four Israelis who were being held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners.
Those talks stalled in August 2023 after Netanyahu changed his mind and cut the number of Palestinians he was willing to release. He also postponed the committee meeting that would have approved the trade of Palestinian prisoners for the Israelis and soldiers’ remains.
Sinwar disappeared from the Shin Bet's radar. He had grown impatient with the slow pace of the talks. He later resurfaced to meet with a Fatah intermediary.
Sinwar delivered a message so important that he repeated it twice: Tell the Israelis I am preparing a zilzal — an earthquake.
The intermediary was shaken by Sinwar’s message, too fearful to deliver it.
When the two met again, Sinwar asked the man if the message had been delivered to the Israelis.
“No.”
Sinowar spoke in a calm, quiet voice after emphasizing that this message about the zilal must be delivered.
Tell the Israelis that “I am preparing the mother of all surprises. A terrifying operation. Something extraordinary.”
Sinwar’s message was delivered to two places. It reached the Shin Bet on September 15, 2023, and then-director Ronen Bar passed it to Netanyahu, warning at a security assessment two days later that Israel was on a collision course and needed either to strike first or harden its defenses.
Nothing was decided. The message also reached a Gaza-born adviser to bin Zayed, which is how it ended up in the Emirati president's lap.
Watching Israel do nothing, bin Zayed made the call himself.
"The emir explained that, in his assessment, Sinwar was preparing for a major event," the adviser told the investigators. "He told Netanyahu that Israel should be ready."
He also urged Netanyahu to ease conditions in Gaza and cool things down in the West Bank.
Netanyahu's answer, per the book: we're prepared for anything. His read was that Hamas was targeting the West Bank, not Gaza.
Around the same window, Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel sent a nearly identical warning and got a nearly identical brush-off.
Herzi Halevi, then the IDF chief of staff, and Ronen Bar both told Haaretz they were never told about the Emirati call.
The Offer Israel Turned Down on Day One
The Haaretz investigation includes a second detail affecting families still waiting for answers. On the evening of October 7 itself, Qatar's prime minister approached Mossad chief David Barnea with an offer: Hamas would release every civilian captive, and ask for nothing back.
Israel said no. Netanyahu's foreign policy adviser Ophir Falk reportedly told security professionals to change their thinking — this was an organization that would be given nothing.
Why is the Fact That Bin Zayed Warned Netanyahu Coming Out Now
Israelis vote on October 27. Fifty days out, four opposition leaders — Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett, Avigdor Liberman and Yair Golan — issued a rare joint statement demanding an immediate investigation and pledging that a state commission of inquiry will be the first act of any government they form.
"The Israeli public is entitled to know: What did Netanyahu know, when did he know, why didn't he update the security establishment, and why didn't he act to protect Israeli civilians?" the statement read.
Bennett called it criminal negligence. Golan, who spent the morning of October 7 driving south to pull civilians out of the killing, said Netanyahu's place is in prison.
Eisenkot, currently polling ahead of him, said Netanyahu received dozens of warnings and ignored all of them.
For nearly three years, Netanyahu has blocked the one thing survivors and mourning families keep asking for: a state commission of inquiry.
Under Israel's 1968 Commissions of Inquiry Law, such a panel is appointed by the president of the Supreme Court and chaired by a judge — the same court Netanyahu's government spent 2023 trying to defang.
Israel used that mechanism after the 1973 Yom Kippur War and after the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre. It hasn’t used it for the deadliest day in the country's history.
The October Council, which represents survivors and bereaved families, cut to it: arguing about whether Netanyahu was woken up that morning misses the real question.
How many times did somebody try to wake Israel up before the massacre?
The count
More than 1,200 people were killed on October 7, 2023. More than 250 were dragged into Gaza.
And in the war that followed, more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed — a toll that human rights organizations and genocide scholars have called a genocide.
The book doesn’t say bin Zayed knew the date, the plan, or the scale.
What it says is narrower and, if true, worse: that a head of state warned the prime minister of Israel about an attack, and the prime minister never showed it to anyone who could have acted on it.
Netanyahu says the call never happened. A commission of inquiry with subpoena power could settle that in an afternoon.
